Happy Halloween!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know it's been a while. So here's some cute kid pics. When Kevin saw Katy and Livvy with the make-up on, he realized just how much trouble he was going to be in for in about 10 years...

I'm finished the Deathly Hallows...

Actually I was up until midnight Monday finishing it. I had reached a point in the book around 10 p.m. and knew I just wasn't going to be able to put it down until I found out how it all turned out... There was one point where I got major chills and all the hairs on my arms actually stood up!

I can't believe that there won't be anymore HP books. Sigh. I won't post any details for those who may still be reading, but I will say that it was a great book. Quite the roller coaster ride. And I liked that JKR answered most of the major questions that had been lingering from previous books, although not always in the way I had hoped...

So, if you're back in the world of Muggles and want to discuss, call me!

The Past Weeks in Pictures

Cousins (Olivia, Riley and Katelyn, all 4 years old)


Cousin Devin (7)


Three Silly Heads on their way to Fort Delaware


Not necessarily what you want to see posted outside of an inn... (fortunately they were just talking about their restaurant)!


Ryan checks out the big cannons at Fort Delaware


Ryan taking the test to be recruited to the Union Army at Fort Delaware


Katy sharing her snack with Ally at the pool


Norah, Katy, Mia, Olivia and Carly waiting for the fireworks


Watching the fireworks


Liam and Ryan acting(!) like noisy boys at the fireworks


Beach Bound


Life's a Beach


Ice Cream on the deck at the beach...can life get much better?


Christmas photos?


No Beach Bums Here!
Olivia (4), Ryan (7), Samantha (7), Cameron (5), Katelyn(4)


Beach Babes


Muscle Beach (?)


Lovin' the Beach


Katy looking for a wave with her new boogie board


Livvy rides her wave


Surfer Dude


Can
You
Say
Private
Beach?!?!?



Beach Ball


Sitting pretty


Coquinas (live baby clams-kids LOVED digging them up!)


Putt Putt Anyone?


Tuckered Out


The BEST Sand Castle Ever. Period.

Home Again, Home Again...

Wow. What a month and half. Since last I posted my time has been spent as follows:

June 9: Drove to Blacksburg, VA to pick up Olivia and Katelyn from their visit with Nana and Pappy. Ryan was supposed to go with me and spend the next week with them, but he woke up that morning with a fever, so we cancelled those plans.

June 10: I woke up with pink eye, Olivia and Ryan both have fevers over 102 F. We decide to take them to urgent care to check for strep and get them onto antibiotics if deemed necessary. They have something called an adenovirus which isn't treatable by antibiotics. It just needs to run its course.

June 11: I wake up with a fever close to 103, and realize that I, too, have the adenovirus.

June 12 - 17: I continue to feel like doo doo. We change our plans for traveling to MD/DE the following week.

June 19: I drive to northern VA with the kids and spend the night at Stephanie's.

June 20: I leave Stephanie's and drive to Middletown, DE to spend the next 4 days with the Claytors. We had a great visit, with lots of fun activities like going to Fort Delaware, a day with Riley & Devin, and a trip to the Brandywine Zoo.

June 24: We leave the Claytor's late in the day and drive to Street, MD to spend the next 5 days with mom and dad. Once again, it was a really good visit and I got to see my childhood friend, Susan one of the days just before she moved out to Indiana. The other days we went to Annie's Playground, swimming at Bel Air Athletic Club, Ryan went golfing a few times, we went to Rock's State Park, and spent some time just hanging around the house.

June 30: We left the Patrinicola's and headed to Odenton, MD to spend the day with Beth, Rob and Ally. It was a fun day at the pool, and Katy learned to swim around in her life vest without me holding her!

July 1: We leave the Stewart's and head home. It was a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG drive because Katy needed to stop for potty breaks much more than usual. Home looked wonderful once we got there around 5 p.m.

July 2: Unpack and do laundry

July 3: Get ready to go see fireworks at the YMCA and then go to the festival that evening around 5 p.m.

July 4: A day on the boat with the Kennedys.

July 5: Run to stores to pick up last minute items for the beach and to get grocery items from BJs

July 6: Pack for two weeks at the beach.

July 7 - 20: We spend a blissful two weeks at Topsail Island, NC. It was amazing. I am spoiled! I will never be able to stay at the beach and not be oceanfront. We had the beach practically to ourselves because it is almost entirely residential--not the commercial mess of the more northern beaches. Sigh.

And now we are home. We decided to go ahead and leave last night (Friday), because we had to come in off the beach around lunch time due to a sizeable thunderstorm that lasted most of the afternoon. We figured we might as well just pack up the cars entirely and head on home instead of putzing around and partially loading the cars just to sleep one more night there (we had to check out by 10 a.m., so it was going to be a crazy early morning for us anyway).

I have never been so relieved and happy to be home! And we don't have any more travels planned for a while. Now I must go and pick up my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Don't plan on hearing from me until it's done...

Poor Judgment...

I want to apologize for the poor judgment I used when publishing a previous (now deleted) post regarding a person whom I love very much. I was dealing with a lot of emotions regarding some previously unsettled issues between us which colored my perception of his illness. It was unfair and disrespectful of me to portray him in such a negative way in a public place.

Ryan's Vacation

When I got back from dropping the girls off with the Zirkles in Blacksburg yesterday (Monday) afternoon, Ryan had just gotten home from his last Monday as a first grader. I gave him a kiss and asked him how his day was:

R: It was good. We made tie-dye shirts for field day. So (claps his hands together once), what should we do for my vacation?

I told him we had lots of stuff planned: visiting grandparents, going to the beach, lego camp, etc...

R: No, mom. I mean today, like, this week. It's my vacation from my sisters!

After I picked myself off the floor from laughing, I asked him what he had in mind. He thought it would be fun to go out to dinner some with just us, and maybe go see Shrek the Third, and some golf with dad too.

Our little king has spoken, and I must say we are enjoying this time with just him. He's turning into such a cool little guy.

And today he brought home the math award for best student in math for his first grade class. Guess he's not taking after me in that department...

I'm Thankful For:

Living next door to a doctor who we're friends with and who has a large box of strep throat test kits. Johnathon has mentioned on more than one ocassion we are welcome to come over to have the kids tested anytime we think they may have strep and save a trip to the pediatrician...

Katy woke up more than a few times Thursday night to go to the bathroom and just seemed generally restless. That's not like her. She mentioned at one point that her belly hurt. I didn't think much of it because she has NEVER had strep throat before.

She was fine when she woke up Friday morning, a bit sleepy acting, but that was to be expected given the number of times she was up Thursday night. I put her down for a nap at 1:00, and she slept until nearly 3:30. Now THAT is not like her--she generally only sleeps for an hour, if she naps at all.

So now I'm getting nervous. She's supposed to go to visit her Nana and Pap tomorrow, and there is no way I'm going to get an appointment with the pediatrician for today. *DING* (can you see the lightbulb that went on over my head?!) Johnathan has strep tests! He can make sure she's okay.

So we take her over to see him 15 minutes later, he does the swab in the kitchen, and we sit around and chat while we wait for the test results. Barbara gives Katy a popsicle, and I keep thinking to myself that this is just too cool. The test result comes back positive--she's got strep, so Johnathan calls in a prescription for her to our pharmacy!

Then he suggests that Olivia come over to get tested just to be sure that she doesn't have it. So he tests her, she gets her popsicle, we all visit awhile and her result is negative. He says we can bring her back in a few days if we want to check again before she would leave to visit with the Zirkles.

What a blessing. So the visit with the Zirkles got postponed a few days to allow Katy to feel better, but he just saved us lots of time and aggravation at an urgent care, not to mention the money in co-pays.

Now I need to figure out an appropriate way to say "thank you." Any ideas?

Sweatin' the small stuff

I'm generally a big fan of the concept of "don't sweat the small stuff." When I'm out running errands and see people getting all bent out of shape over things that they will have absolutely no memory of by the next day, I feel sorry for them. So much of our lives is just not in our control, and if something goes wrong (like your food taking longer than expected to arrive at a restaurant, or someone cutting in front of you in line, or a store being out of a product that you had wanted to get from their sale flyer, etc., etc., etc.), I'm really stunned by how people overreact.

But lately I've been doing the same thing. Not out and about, but around the house. And it's making me really upset with myself. Which somehow seems to make me do it more.

I suppose it's good that I recognize that I'm doing it, but I need to figure out how to make myself STOP already. And I wish I knew WHY I was doing it--what's changed? Is it the babysitting? Or the threat of 3 months of summer vacation with all the kids home ALL the time? Or something hormonal? Or something else? Whatever it is, it's getting old...

Uh oh, are we in trouble?

Now that the girls are done with school, we are planning weekly outings and playdates with several of the other moms in our neighborhood. It's nice because one of the moms has lived here for nearly 7 years so she knows the area fairly well and has introduced some of us newbies to some fun places to go with kids.

Last week we went to Latta Plantation which has a huge variety of activities. We'll be going back again other times this summer to check out some of the other fun things to see and do (a raptor center, a nature preserve, lots of hiking trails, etc.). But this time we went to go to the horses and ponies. Talk about a lot of excited little girls!

We bought some bags full of special horse snacks (oatmeal and apple cookie-like things), and signed up for a pony ride for each of the bigger kids who was with us. Olivia never quite worked up the courage to feed the horses or ponies by herself, although she would put her hand under mine and allow me to give them a treat. Katelyn couldn't wait to give the treats to the horses all by herself and shooed me away.


And of course Katy couldn't wait to do the pony ride. She was third in line (she would have been first, but there were a few kids who ran a bit faster...), but waited so patiently. She had such a sweet, confidant smile on her face for her entire ride.







Olivia held back at first. She wanted to ride the pony, but she waited to watch how it went for all the other children first. Once she saw that no one got hurt, she said she was ready to try, but wanted me to walk next to her. I walked with her for the first two times around the path, but she went solo for the last two times.


It's too early to make any predictions, but I know I've got at least one horse lover on my hands...

Getting there...

Well, it's been nearly a year, and we're finally starting to get the upstairs bedrooms a bit more finished looking. Ryan's room and our room still need curtains, and Ryan needs a headboard and some things to hang on his walls. I'd like to get a comfy chair for our room, and a different place to put the TV (actually I'd like to get rid of the TV in our room! But that's never going to happen. Sigh).

Tomorrow morning is our preliminary one-year walk through with the builder's warranty rep to figure out which contractors he needs to schedule to fix all of our warranty items. And then the house will get torn apart for a solid day of contractors in and out followed up by a visit by housecleaners to get rid of all the drywall dust. I'm really hoping that they schedule these days of fun while I'm visiting friends and family later in June!

And once we've gotten all the drywall repairs done, we're going to start painting! I'm excited to get some colors on our walls! I don't know that we'll do the main living areas yet because I just don't know what color I want to use, but the bedrooms will all be done and that will go a long way towards making things look finished.

Last Day of School...

How can it be that the girls are done with their first year of school already?

Wasn't I just taking pictures of them in their new orange 'Comets' T-shirts that all the children in the 3-year-old class wore for their first day?

Didn't I just receive a phone call from Cathy, the site coordinator, while trying to get my hair cut on their second day of school to tell me that they were both still crying 20 minutes after drop-off?

You mean to say that it has been 8 1/2 months since they had a hard time separating from me to go to school?

Has it really been over 5 months since they were dressed up as angels for the Christmas program and Katy announced "One night, shepherds were watching their sheep!"?

And didn't we just celebrate pajama day? and silly socks day? and wild west day?

Their very first field trip was almost a whole month ago? Are you sure?!?

Where does the time go? Before I know it I'll be writing that I can't believe they're graduating from Kindergarten, and then Elementary School... As a wise person once recorded on their blog "the days can drag on for eternity, but the months fly by." Truer words have not been spoken.

We received a DVD with a slide show filled with pictures taken over the past year by Cathy (the site coordinator for the YMCA preschool) today. I'd forgotten that they took pictures of the girls on their first day of school next to a picture of a tree with measuring marks on the trunk, and must have taken them again a few days ago next to the same tree. Olivia and Katy have both grown nearly 3 1/2 inches this year! I knew they had gotten bigger, but seeing the two pictures side by side was just so neat. I'm trying to figure out how to get individual photos off of the disk, and will post them once I've got it figured out.

And now I need to figure out how to fill the next three months until school starts again...

THIS is why we love it here...

Lake Norman rocks.

I knew that going out on the boat was fun, but it has gotten even better this year because we've discovered the joy of grounding the boat at one of the numerous islands that have little sandy beaches for the kids to play on. Bring along a bunch of sand toys and the kiddos are busy (and HAPPY!) for hours. Seriously.

And now my youngest children are old enough to go play in the sand and at the edge of the water for hours without the tiniest bit of complaining. Just the occasional request for food. And thanks to mandatory life vest rules imposed by the Lake Norman Police (not really, but the kiddos believe us!), we don't have to be right on top of them all the time.

We're going out again on Sunday for Memorial Day, and i. just. can't. wait.

Lego Dude

Ryan is thoroughly, completely, absolutely obsessed with Legos. He is always asking: "when can I get a new Lego set?" We've discovered that the promise of a new Lego set can be quite the motivator. (He's actually reading this out loud as I type--how cool is that?!)

For instance, each week his class has a pretest for the spelling words for that week. If a student gets all the words right on the pretest, then they get the challenge word list with harder words to learn. For several weeks he was consistantly bringing home the challenge word list, but was not real thrilled about having to learn the harder words. Then suddenly it stopped. I didn't pay much attention at first, but then the weekly newsletter mentioned the challenge word lists.

I looked at his spelling pretest and noticed that he had misspelled several words that I was fairly sure he knew. I asked him why he had gotten them wrong and he looked down and said "I guess I was rushing through my work." I reminded him about the importance of getting the job done right instead of getting it done fast.

The following week, there were some more misspelled words that I thought for sure he would know how to spell. The weekly lists generally contain words in a common word family, and he had gotten other words right on the test (like 'sound' and 'found' and 'round') but missed some (spelled 'loud' as 'lowd' and 'proud' as 'prowd').

Now, I don't mean to brag (honest!), but Ryan is a pretty doggone bright kid. And I KNEW that something was up. So I asked him if he was getting words wrong on the pretest on purpose so that he wouldn't have to do the challenge word list. He immediately hung his head and wouldn't look me in the eye. Hmmm. Guess I was onto something, huh? I asked him again, while making him look me in the eye, and he confessed that he didn't want to have to do the challenge words.

I didn't know what to do at first. I had the presence of mind to control myself from laughing or congratulating him (didn't think that would be the appropriate response, even though those thoughts ran through my mind!). I had to send him to his room so that I could talk to Kevin about it. We both had a good laugh. After all, you have GOT to admire the thought process!

We decided that this shouldn't be something we punish him for. We don't want learning or school to become unenjoyable, and don't want to motivate him with fear. Plus, sometimes he might legitimately not know how to spell one of the regular words. So we came up with a point system to motivate him to try to get the challenge words. Each word he got right on the pretest was worth 1 point (there are 10 regular words each week). If he brought the challenge list home, he got a bonus of 5 points. Then for the real spelling test on Friday, if he was being tested on the basic list, each word was worth another 1 point, but the challenge list words were worth 2 points each. Soooooo, without the challenge list he could earn a maximum of 19 points for the week, but WITH the challenge list he could earn 35 points for the week.

We then put together a variety of ways for him to "spend" his points: 10 points for ice cream at Brusters (by himself with mom or dad); 50 points for a trip to the movies (again, by himself with mom or dad); etc.; with the ultimate prize being 500 points for a new Lego set worth $50.

Since starting this system he has earned 447 points and has a few weeks left until the end of the year. There have only been 2 weeks that he hasn't brought home the challenge list. And he hasn't spent a single point yet. He is salivating over the chance to go get the newest Batman set he's been eyeing.

Cool. Especially since I know that these types of results would not have happened with a negative system of consequences. Thank you Legos for giving my son a reason to enjoy learning!

Here are a few examples of his building talents. Not bad for a 7-year-old, eh? Perhaps we have a future architect in our family... He always builds a new set according to the directions, and leaves it to admire for a few weeks, but then he starts tweaking it and finally dismantles it and turns it into something completely new by combining it with legos from other sets.

I am always so amazed by the complexity with which he builds. He is particularly fond of using symmetry.